A self-organizing network (SON, Self-Organizing Network) is a specific standardization task of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project) international standard organization. The core idea thereof is to reduce, by using an automation process in network planning, deployment, optimization, and maintenance stages, conventional manual operations, thereby reducing maintenance costs of a network operator. Energy saving (ES, Energy Saving) or an energy-saving control method is a very important subject in the SON standardization task, which is especially true for a cell in a heterogeneous system or an inter-radio-access technology (Inter-RAT, Inter Radio Access Technology) cell.
A heterogeneous-system cell refers to a cell where different radio access technologies (that is, different radio standards) for example, a second generation mobile communications technology (2G, that is, Global System for Mobile Communications (Global System of Mobile communication, GSM)), a third generation mobile communications technology (3G, that is, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, UMTS)), and a fourth generation mobile communications technology (4G, that is, a Long-Term Evolution (Long Term Evolution) system, also referred to as an LTE system), are superimposed and cover the same geographic region. Generally, a cell using a 4G standard (also referred to as an Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) cell, hereinafter referred to as an E-UTRAN cell) provides capacity extensibility for some hot spot (hot spot) areas within the region, thereby ensuring high-speed data services or multimedia services in the hot spot areas; a cell using a 3G standard (also referred to as an Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN, Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) cell, hereinafter referred to as an UTRAN cell) or a cell using a 2G standard provides basic coverage for the entire geographic region and ensures basic services within the region, such as the provision of voice services and low- and medium-speed data services.
In the prior art, an energy-saving control method for a cell is limited to an intra-LTE (Intra-LTE) cell. That is, a cell for which energy saving can be switched on/off is an E-UTRAN cell, and in an energy-saving process, basic coverage and support is also provided by the E-UTRAN cell. The energy-saving control method is merely based on monitoring of a traffic load (traffic load) threshold of an E-UTRAN cell. However, in a scenario of energy-saving for a cell in a heterogeneous system, the method based on monitoring of a traffic load threshold of a cell in the prior art has its obvious limitation. The method cannot smoothly cater for the problem of deteriorated quality of service due to a difference between services of cells in heterogeneous systems when a multi-mode user equipment (UE, User Equipment) moves between the cells in the heterogeneous systems. This is an urgent problem to be solved for energy-saving control between cells in heterogeneous systems.